The Indian name of this beautiful region, Minisink, "the water is gone,"
agrees with the belief of geologists that a lake once existed behind the
Blue Ridge, and that it burst its way through the hills at this point.
Similar results were produced by a cataclysm on the Connecticut at Mount
Holyoke, on the Lehigh at Mauch Chunk, and Runaway Pond, New Hampshire,
got its name by a like performance. The aborigines, whatever may be said
against them, enjoyed natural beauty, and their habitations were often
made in this delightful region, their councils being attended by chief
Tamanend, or Tammany, a Delaware, whose wisdom and virtues were such as
to raise him to the place of patron saint of America. The notorious
Tammany Society of New York is named for him. When this chief became old
and feeble his tribe abandoned him in a hut at New Britain, Pennsylvania,
and there he tried to kill himself by stabbing, but failing in that, he
flung burning leaves over himself, and so perished. He was buried where
he died. It was a princess of his tribe that gave the name of Lover's
Leap to a cliff on Mount Tammany, by leaping from it to her death,
because her love for a young European was not reciprocated.

There is a silver-mine somewhere on the opposite mountain of Minsi, the
knowledge of its location having perished with the death of a recluse,
who coined the metal he took from it into valuable though illegal
dollars, going townward every winter to squander his earnings. During the
Revolution "Oran the Hawk," a Tory and renegade, was vexatious to the
people of Delaware Valley, and a detachment of colonial troops was sent
in pursuit of him. They overtook him at the Gap and chased him up the
slopes of Tammany, though he checked their progress by rolling stones
among them. One rock struck a trooper, crushed him, and bore him down to
the base of a cliff, his blood smearing it in his descent. But though he
seemed to have eluded his pursuers, Oran was shot in several places